On TNT, \'Major Crimes\' Replaces (and Gets a Boost From) \'The Closer\'

By BRIAN STELTER

The debut of “Major Crimes,” TNT's replacement for “The Closer,” scored nearly 7.2 million viewers on Monday night, making it the most popular new series on cable this year, TNT said on Tuesday.

The new drama retained most of the 9.1 million viewers that had tuned in for the series finale of “The Closer” an hour earlier. That's not surprising since the new show has, as Mike Hale of The New York Times said on Monday, the “same setting (not to mention sets), same music, same writers and directors, nearly the same cast” as “The Closer” had.

Next Monday, “Major Crimes” will slide into the time slot “The Closer” had.

Led by Kyra Sedgwick, “The Closer” has been the most popular drama on cable television. Citing preliminary Nielsen ratings, TNT said that the series finale on Monday was its second-most-popular episode, behind a midseason finale in 2007 that had about 9.2 million viewers on the day it was televised.

Of course, digital video recorders have proliferated since then; TNT said in a news release that it expected that Monday's episode would surpass the one in 2007 “when final data becomes available in two weeks.”


Until now the most-watched new cable series of the year was “Dallas,” also on TNT, which had 6.9 million viewers out of the gate in June.

Times Co. Names Mark Thompson Chief Executive

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY and AMY CHOZICK

The New York Times Company has named Mark Thompson, the outgoing director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, as its new president and chief executive.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper's publisher, announced the appointment late Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Thompson, 55, will join the company in November. In addition to his executive roles, he will also sit on the board of directors.

“The New York Times is one of the world's greatest news providers and a media brand of immense future potential both in the U.S. and around the world,” Mr. Thompson said in a company statement. “It is a real privilege to be asked to join the Times Company as it embarks on the next chapter in its history.”

The Times has been without a chief executive since Janet Robinson left in December 2011. Since then, Mr. Sulzberger has said the company was looking for a candidate with experience in the digital world and across multiple platforms.

In a statement, Mr. Sulzberger praised Mr. Thompson as “a gifted and experienced executive with strong credentials whose leadership at the BBC helped it to extend its trusted brand identity into new digital products and services,” adding that his skills “speak to our future.”

Mr. Thompson had said he would leave his current position after the London Olympics, which ended Sunday. Aside from a 2002 to 2004 stint as chief executive of Britain's Channel 4, Mr. Thompson has spent his career at the BBC, mostly overseeing the news organization's television coverage.

Mr. Thompson's reign at the BBC has largely been categorized as one of digital expansion and as having an emphasis on developing the BBC internationally. For example, he championed the BBC's collaboration in YouView, a joint venture with ITV, Channel 4 and other channels tha t provides digital TV. He has also overseen several rounds of cost cutting at the BBC, which depends largely on mandatory license fees, not advertising, for its operating budget.

A graduate of the University of Oxford's Merton College, Mr. Thompson first joined the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. After working as an editor on the BBC's flagship “Nine O'Clock News” and the news program “Panorama,” he graduated to overseeing BBC2 and serving as the BBC's director of national and regional broadcasting.

In 2000, Mr. Thompson became the BBC's director of television. He has served as BBC Worldwide's director general since 2004 and added chairman to his title this year. As director general, he oversaw 20,000 employees globally and 400,000 hours of programming, according to the BBC Web site.

Mr. Thompson has frequently weighed in on controversies about the BBC's coverage. In 2010, he told The New Statesman, a current affairs magazine, that in the past, particularly during the Thatcher years, the BBC had a “massive” left-leaning bias, but added that the bias no longer existed. In June, the BBC fielded more than 4,000 complaints about its coverage of the queen's diamond jubilee. Mr. Thompson apologized for “some inaccuracies in the commentary that we shouldn't have had.”

Mr. Thompson currently lives in Oxford, with his wife, the American-born Jane Blumberg. They have three children.

Mr. Thompson will be joining The Times as it continues to face challenges posed by changing reader habits and a shifting advertising market. Last month, the company reported a net loss of $88 million for the second quarter of 2012, and advertising revenue at its News Media Group, which includes The Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe, fell 6.6 percent.

A positive sign for The Times has been the success of its digital-subscription strategy, which was introduced in March 2011. This year, paid digi tal subscribers to the Web site, e-reader and other digital editions of The Times and The International Herald Tribune increased by 12 percent from the first quarter to the second, to 509,000 from 454,000.

Over the last year, the Times company has been shedding assets to focus on its core newspaper business. Last year, the company sold its remaining assets in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox, and in January, it sold its Regional Media Group - the division that included the regional newspapers - to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million.

In early August, the company acknowledged that it was exploring the sale of its About group, which includes the online resources guide About.com. A person briefed on the discussions said it had reached a preliminary deal to sell About to Answers.com for $270 million.

The market has generally reacted positively to the sales of these assets. Shares in the company, which sold for $5.50 last September, clo sed at $9.09 on Tuesday.

\'Dear Pussycat\': Editors Remember Helen Gurley Brown

By THE EDITORS

The influence of Helen Gurley Brown, who died on Monday at age 90, extended widely across the culture, and deeply within the world of magazines. What follows are remembrances from women who worked with Ms. Brown: Lesley Jane Seymour, Bonnie Fuller, Jill Herzig, Cathleen P. Black, Kate White and Donna Kalajian Lagani.

Lesley Jane Seymour
Editor in chief, More magazine

I first met Helen Gurley Brown when I was the new editor in chief of Redbook magazine in 1998. I'd come up through the ranks in fashion and beauty at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and though I'd successfully edited teen fashion magazine, YM, I was stymied by the Redbook cover: the lead cover line - right up in the important left-hand corner -was always about sex. This was sex for young moms and their husbands. What did I know about that? Yes, I was a young mom myself but I had never “sold” sex on a magazine cover before.

Terrified of getting it wrong, I called HGB who I understood had an office on one of the executive floors in the Hearst building. She received me in her leopard-carpeted office and listened to my concerns. She offered to take a look at my planned cover lines and story ideas and get back to me. About two weeks later I was summoned back to her office. Helen laid my papers out on her desk and told me that she and her husband, David, had just gotten back from vacation but not to worry: they had spent time there going over my work! (Legend had it that David Brown had written most of or all of the Cosmo cover lines for years.)

I was mortified that this power couple would have spent time on their vacation working on my problem, but thrilled when she told me that David said “the sex lines are all perfect!” She had just a few critiques of my story ideas and she laid the papers out for me on her desk. For months afterward - and on through my time as editor in chief of Marie Claire - I wo uld receive a hand-typed note from Helen, critiquing the current issue of the magazine I was editing. She'd read every word and give thoughtful pointers. I framed the first note and put it on my wall; I was flattered and awed that an icon took the time to help me develop my work. Helen and I would have lunch every now and then and at one point she said, “You know, I never had children. But if I did, I would have liked to have had a daughter like you.”

Bonnie Fuller
Former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan,
current editor in chief of Hollywoodlife.com

I first met Helen Gurley Brown when I was about 29 years old and the editor in chief of Flare, the national fashion magazine in Canada. I was introduced to her by Gil Maurer, the C.O.O. of Hearst, who I had met through a friend. Gil thought we should meet because I was thinking about making a move back to New York City and he thought perhaps there might be a spot for me as a features editor or senior editor at Cosmo.

First of all, I was stunned by Helen's office. I'd never seen an office like that. It was almost like a boudoir! Leopard print rug on the ground, comfy floral couch covered in needlepoint and floral pillows, girly, frilly curtains, and there was Helen, curled up on her couch, her shoes off and her feet tucked under her skirt. This had not been my vision of the powerful famous editor in chief of Cosmopolitan. But I learned that this was very Helen, who was as warm to everyone she met as she was to her readers.

Within a few minutes, we were chatting like one “Cosmo girl” to another. She was calling me pussycat and making me feel so comfortable that I could practically confide anything to her, while she almost purred in response. She ended our meeting by suggesting that I might send her a few story ideas to see if there might be a story that I could write freelance for Cosmo. I took her suggestion to heart, went back t o Toronto and promptly fired off a letter with 100 story ideas for Cosmo. Well that provoked an immediate response with one of her famous “Dear Pussycat” notes, which she typed on her old Corona typewriter. She loved that I had sent 100 ideas and from that moment forward, I was the girl with the 100 ideas. She never forgot that.

Helen Gurley Brown told me that she was so freaked out after her first day as the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, that she literally crawled under her desk to hide. That's where her husband, David, found her when he came to pick her up at the end of the day.

Jill Herzig
Editor in chief, Redbook

I arrived at Cosmo as a 22-year-old editorial assistant in the book and fiction department and fell deeply in love with my job, my immediate boss, Betty Kelly, and the incomparable Helen Gurley Brown. Two years and a promotion later, I was still enthralled with the whole enterprise, but I wanted more t han the tiny standard raise I was given on my anniversary. I appealed to Betty, who promised to get back to me. “Helen wants to talk to you about this,” she told me soon after. “Make an appointment to meet with her.”

I did as I was told, knees knocking. That afternoon, I was in Helen's office, surrounded by her memorabilia and liberal splashes of animal print. She sat down with me on her couch and wasted no time on small talk. “Betty tells me you want a nicer raise,” she said in her famously breathy, Pussycat-Doll voice. I said yes, and made my case, telling her why I thought I was worth more. “Jill, honey, you are very smart, very good, and you are going to get a raise,” she told me, “but you won't get it here at Cosmo.”

She smiled in a way that made it clear we were done. The message was clear: If I wanted to make more I had to exit the safety of a job that felt like home and find the next gig. That's how I wound up moving to a men's magazin e as a senior editor, making 10 grand more, a few months later. Helen was brave by nature, and taught the women who worked for her by example. When example wasn't enough, she had no problem telling you, Oh come on - be gutsy. I did as I was told.

Cathleen P. Black
Former chairwoman of Hearst Magazines

Hearst always had an employee-only Christmas party at Tavern on the Green, tables filled with shrimp and crab meat and roast beef. Helen always in her Pucci dress with the fringe was always the first on the dance floor. She would dance with everybody, the mail guy, the stock room clerk. She never forgot her roots. She would reach out and dance with everybody. She called everybody pussycat and she wrote magnificent letters typed on her Royal. It would be some long fabulous letter about something incredible. She would describe it in great detail. If you sent her flowers, she would not just come back with they were pink and blue. She would say what kind they were. She adored David. He was her heart and soul.

Kate White
Editor in chief, Cosmopolitan

When I was the editor at Redbook, I once slipped into the ladies' room at some event or another, and I discovered Helen in there. She seemed to be talking to herself, and she said, “Excuse me, Kate, I'm just rehearsing my remarks.” And what I loved about that was that she wasn't afraid to admit that it didn't all come easily, that you had to work hard, you had to do your homework, and you had to rehearse your remarks if you wanted to be at the very top. And I never again was ashamed to slip into the ladies' room and practice a speech.

The first time I had lunch with her I saw she ate her salad with her hands. She very sensuously picked up the lettuce leaves and slipped them into her mouth. She said it was sexier than using a fork.

Donna Kalajian Lagani
Senior vice presiden t and publishing director,
Cosmopolitan Group

I loved Helen from the moment I met her. I had come to her office to discuss becoming the publisher of Cosmopolitan, but within minutes we were seated on her rose chintz sofa, stilettos kicked to the fabulous leopard print carpet, feet curled up underneath us. We spent the next two hours like that, talking about everything from our careers to magazines to men. At the end of our chat, she said, “Honey, I don't know if you want to come work here or not, but I hope we can be girlfriends forever.” And that's just how Helen was. She had people on her team who had worked for her for 20 years - that's the kind of loyalty she inspired. She never had an unkind word to say about anyone, and when she spoke to you, you got the feeling you were the only person in the room. My darling Helen, I love you and will miss you forever.

Note to Self: Double-Check Those Electric Bills

By ANN CARRNS

Are you one of those people who pay monthly electric and gas charges without closely looking at the bills? (You know who you are.)

If so, you may want to start paying closer attention to the details of your power consumption and your costs. Or you could end up like Grace Edwards, a resident of Cheshire, Conn., who overpaid thousands of dollars on her electric bill for costs that she was not actually responsible for paying.

(Two Connecticut newspapers reported her tale, which was brought to our attention by The Consumerist).

How, you may wonder, could this happen? According to The Hartford Courant, Ms. Edwards and her late husband had bought their house in 1987 from a developer who, it seems, had been footing the bill for two streetlights in the subdivision. She didn't realize she was continuing to pay for the lights until she tried to sell the home. A potential buyer asked for a history of its utility costs, which l ed to a close examination of past statements. It turned out that two mysterious line items on her bill - “9500 Lumen HP Sodium” and “6300 Lumen HP Sodium” - were for the electrcity powering the street lights.

She contacted Connecticut Light and Power, which removed the streetlight items from her bill, but did not reimburse her for the past costs. She next sought help from the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, to no avail. She ended up going to the state's Office of Consumer Counsel, which helped resolve the matter in her favor. The utility reimbursed her for the past costs, plus interest, for a total of $10,491.21 - and apologized.

Joe Rosenthal, principal lawyer with the consumer counsel office, said that the office normally represents consumers as a group in rate disputes, rather than as individuals, but that “we were happy to help.” Ms. Edwards's bills contained a line item for the lights. It wasn't clear to her what the item represented, he said - although it should have been clear to the utility. (The Courant reported that Ms. Edwards had previously been told that the charges were for an air-conditioning system or even a whirlpool bath). Regardless, he said, “They paid her back. The outcome was a good one.”

Ms. Edwards could not be reached for comment. But Bucks suspects she now agrees that it is a good idea for ratepayers to closely inspect their utility bills - and any other statements, for that matter - and demand an explanation of any strange charges before signing the monthly check.

Have you ever caught an error in a utility bill? Were you able to have the problem resolved?

Court to Hear Google\'s Challenge to Class-Action Lawsuit on Book Scanning

By JULIE BOSMAN

In May, the Authors Guild celebrated a decision in the long-running case over Google's book-scanning project when a federal judge granted its authors class-action status.

Now Google has notched a small victory of its own.

On Tuesday, an appeals court said the company could challenge the ruling of Judge Denny Chin that allowed the authors to sue as a group.

In a filing on Tuesday accepting the appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Court did not explain its decision.

James Grimmelmann, a professor at New York Law School who has closely followed the litigation over Google Book Search, said it was unlikely that the decision would delay the main case. “I'm thinking this is probably reflecting the high-profile nature of the litigation,” Mr. Grimmelmann said. “There's an interest in getting this one right.”

The Authors Guild did not immediately respond to a request for com ment. Google declined to comment.

Judge Chin has said that class action is “the superior method for resolving this litigation,” arguing that it is “more efficient and effective than requiring thousands of authors to sue individually.”

Groups representing authors and publishers originally sued Google in 2005, arguing that its ambitious book-scanning project was a violation of copyright. After years of litigation, the parties agreed on a $125 million settlement, but it was rejected by Judge Chin in 2011.

Trying to Deposit Checks With My New iPhone

August 14, 2012, 12:31 pm

By ANN CARRNS

Bank of America has (finally) begun offering a check deposit feature on its mobile banking app for smartphones and tablets. The addition gave me the push I needed to try mobile banking on my new iPhone. So I tested it, with varying results.

Bank of America recently introduced the deposit feature with little fanfare. Citibank and Chase already offer “remote deposit capture,” as it's called, and some smaller banks, like USAA, have been offering it for even longer.

I easily downloaded the bank's free mobile banking app onto my iPhone and logged in using my online banking credentials. You have to be an online banking customer to use the mobile banking app. Because I was using a new phone, I also had to answer additional security questions to verify my identity the first time I used the app.

Once the app opened, I clicked on the “deposits” tab. The app directed me to take two photos: one of the front of the check and a second of the back of the check (which must be endorsed “for deposit only.”) It instructed me to place the check in a well-lit area, to make sure the image was within the square frame provided as a guide and to snap the image from above.

This step took me a couple of tries with the first check, a computer-printed version. The app rejected my first two attempts as too blurry. But I moved to an area with better lighting (my kitchen, if you must know), and the third time worked. I then chose an account to deposit the funds into, typed in the amount and clicked “deposit.” Pretty easy, and I didn't have to get in my car and drive to a branch.

The second check, however, a hand-written personal check sent b y a relative as a gift for my daughter's birthday, was a different story. Despite taking and retaking the image numerous times, in different lighting and from varying heights, I got the same error message: “The image is blurry. Please retake a clear photo.”

I called customer service, and a bank representative said he wasn't aware of any issues with deposits of personal checks. He suggested uninstalling, then reinstalling, the app, and trying again later. If that didn't work, he suggested there might be a problem with my phone's camera, so I should contact Apple to see if they had any ideas about solving the blurriness problem.

I called my cellular provider (Verizon), which sold me the phone less than two weeks ago. The first customer service representative - after first saying, not entirely as a joke, that I simply deposit it the old-fashioned way - gamely walked me through uninstalling and reinstalling the app, That didn't help. The representative then refer red me to someone else, who had me snap a photo and text it to myself to check the image quality. It looked clear to me. But the app still wouldn't accept the check images.

Verizon connected me to an Apple representative, who verified that I had properly updated software before suggesting that I remove the phone's protective case, in case it was interfering with the auto-focus feature. She also advised tapping on the image, to help focus before snapping the shutter. Neither step helped.

I gave Bank of America a second call, and the representative I spoke with suggested that the image of the hand-written check might not be clear enough for the app to accept. (Sometimes, she noted, A.T.M.'s can't read such checks either, and you must type in certain information to deposit them by machine.) Did I perhaps have a second, type-written check to deposit to test that theory?

Turns out, I did. (This problem of stockpiling paper checks, for a rare visit to a branch, i s one reason I was eager to try the app.) That one was accepted for deposit without a problem.

A Bank of America spokeswoman said that while there might occasionally be a problem with an individual check, “by and large, feedback has been positive” for the new feature. Indeed, I was able to deposit a second, hand-written personal check later in the day, after tapping on the phone's screen before snapping the image, as the Apple rep suggested. So I guess the first personal check was just a dud, and I'll have to deposit it the traditional way.

At any rate, I successfully deposited three of four checks from the comfort of my home. The app instructed me to keep the checks for 14 days - in case they were needed for verification - and then destroy them. This means you must keep track of the paper for a little while. I'm not the most organized person, so I made a note on the checks, in pencil, that I had already deposited them. (Photos of the checks aren't stored on your phone, in case you were wondering.)

Funds deposited by the mobile app show up immediately on your account, but aren't available for withdrawal until the next day. There's a limit on the funds you can deposit each month using the mobile check app. I was curious to know more about the deposit limits and how they're set, but was unable to find details on the bank's Web site. The site directed me to the “terms and conditions” for details, but I searched in vain for the document.

I called and spoke to yet another customer service representative (As an aside, all the customer service people I spoke with about the problem were sympathetic, courteous and willing to try to help), who agreed that that the information was, in fact, unavailable on the Web site. “It's not just you,” he said. But the bank would be remedying that as soon as possible, he said. The monthly deposit limit varies, he explained, depending on the type of account you have and the length of time you've been a customer of the bank, but is generally $5,000 for most customers.

Have you tried out Bank of America's mobile deposit feature? How did it work for you?

At NBC, the Thrill Is Gone Along With the Audience

August 14, 2012, 12:32 pm

By BILL CARTER

NBC got its first taste of the difference between the Olympics and anything else it can offer in prime time: its audience Monday night dropped about 25 million from the network's Olympic highs.

And if anyone deserved a ratings gold medal on the night, it was the chef Gordon Ramsay on Fox. With none of the Olympic hype, Mr. Ramsay's two reality shows beat NBC from 8 to 10 p.m., with his returning series, “Hell's Kitchen,” the dominant show of the night.

In isolation, without any expected halo from the Olympics, NBC's performance would have been considered respectable, especially for its 10 p.m. drama “Grimm.” That drama returned for its second season - riding a crest of promotions in the Olympi cs - with its second-highest rating ever in the audience category NBC sells to most of its advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

That was hardly a huge number, a 2.0 rating, but it would generally rank as a solid performance for a drama at 10 p.m. on an August night. “Grimm” averaged about 5.7 million viewers, which was the second-best total for the night.

Less impressive was the showing of a new reality series heavily pumped during the Olympic coverage: “Stars Earn Stripes.” The show managed to beat the weak “Bachelor Pad” on ABC and repeats on CBS, but Mr. Ramsay's new series, “Hotel Hell” - which didn't benefit from 17 days of exposure to 30 million viewers a night - decisively topped NBC's military-inspired  competition series.

“Hotel Hell” scored a 1.9 in the 18-49 ratings to a 1.7 in that hour for “Stars Earn Stripes.”

Mr. Ramsay kicked into high gear against the second hour of the NBC bombs and guns show. His “Hell's Kitchen” scored the night's best 2.7 from 9 to 10, far above the 1.7 NBC scored in that hour.

Over all, the non-Olympics programming on NBC was beaten by Fox by 28 percent.

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

New Woodward Book Due in September

August 14, 2012, 12:16 pm

By JULIE BOSMAN

The fall books season just got a little more crowded. Bob Woodward's 17th book, “The Price of Politics,” will be published on Sept. 11, his publisher said on Tuesday, in the splashy, embargoed style that has been a trademark of a Woodward release. The book is “an intimate, documented examination of how President Obama and the highest profile Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States Congress attempted to restore the American economy and improve the federal government's fiscal condition over three and one half years,” the publisher, Simon & Schuster, said in a statement. An excerpt of the book will run in The Washington Post, where Mr. Woodward is an associate editor. Mr. Woodward is expected to grant interviews to
Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

The Breakfast Meeting: How H.G.B. (Re)vamped Magazines, and Commiting Photography in Public

By NOAM COHEN

Helen Gurley Brown, who died on Monday at 90, was remembered for her transformation of Cosmopolitan magazine, and ultimately the field of women's magazines. She was hired to run the stodgy magazine in 1965 after her book “Sex and the Single Girl” sold millions copies and was turned into a movie starring Natalie Wood. As Margolit Fox writes in her obituary: “Her influence on Cosmopolitan was swift and certain: she did not so much revamp the magazine as vamp it.” As for her influence on society, Ms. Fox concludes:

Ms. Brown routinely described herself as a feminist, but whether her work helped or hindered the cause of women's liberation has been publicly debated for decades. It will doubtless be debated long after her death. What is safe to say is that she was a Janus-headed figure in women's history, simultaneously progressive and retrogressive in her approach to women's social roles.

• The Web site for Hearst, which publishes Cosmopolitan, includes a slide show of Ms. Brown over the years socializing with celebrities like Regis Philbin, Queen Elizabeth II and Walter Cronkite, among others.

The moderators for the presidential and vice-presidential debates were announced on Monday, and for the first time since 1992, a woman will be moderating one of the presidential debates, Brian Stelter writes. The roster is a familiar one: Bob Schieffer of CBS, Candy Crowley of CNN and Jim Lehrer of PBS will moderate the presidential debates; Martha Raddatz of ABC will run the vice-presidential debate. Mr. Lehrer, who has hosted 11 presidential debates, had sworn them off, but said he was convinced because of the unusual format for his debate: six topic areas, 15 minutes for each, with opportunities for President Obama and Mitt Romney to question each other directly.

Mickey H. Osterreicher, the general counsel for the National Press Photographers Associa tion, tells Jim Estrin of the Lens blog of the rough treatment photojournalists have been receiving lately from the authorities. His organization advocates for professional photojournalists, but notes that average citizens also have their rights infringed when stopped from photographing public scenes. He said that a “perfect storm” of events have given the police an excuse to crack down on photojournalism:

There's 9/11, and now photojournalists who traditionally worked for newspapers are losing their jobs and becoming freelancers who may not have the backing of their news organizations. You have Occupy Wall Street, where police didn't want some of their actions to be photographed. And now everybody with a cellphone is capable of recording very high-quality images. And everyone has the ability to upload and share them almost instantly. There is no news cycle - it's 24/7 with unlimited bandwidth.

Tuesday Reading: Many States Stiffen Teen Driving Laws

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.